Rachel LeMoyne

Nanih Waiya, Mississippi
The Choctaw Nation
October, 1832
prologue
Nanih Waiya, Mississippi
October, 1832


Rachel's mother wrapped tiny Sleeps Sound close against her heart. She took Rachel's hand and walked, tall and beautiful, to the white elm tree nearest their cabin door. Rachel's parents had planted the elm when Atoka was born. It was now finely made, like her brother Atoka, lifting its branches like a fountain from the ground, its leaves reaching for the warm October sky. Atoka's afterbirth had been its first nourishment, as Rachel's was for the oak planted five years later.
Rachel's tree was in the shadow of her grandmother's white oak, and was the oak's child. The counselor oak told the Choctaw the place to build their homes. Its roots went deep in rich soil. Its wood was both strong and beautiful. Someday Rachel's small tree would be wise. She would advise the time to plant corn--when her new pink and silver leaves are the size of the mouse's ear. But who would hear the wisdom?
Another of the grandmother tree's children now grew from Sleeps Sound's birth gift. Rachel worried about her new sister'sseedling. Once they set off on their journey, the Americans would take over the lands and cabins of the Choctaw. Rachel knew enough of Americans to be afraid for Sleeps Sound's tree. She wanted to cry for it, and to cry for her sister, who would not remember the ancestral home of the people except in her deep dreaming.
Rachel was named LeMoyne from her father's French ancestor, Rachel by way of the missionary teachers who baptized her a Christian. But she'd also earned her first Choctaw name, Yalabusha --Tadpole--for her swimming prowess. Some had begun to call her Gathers Stories, too, for the way she listened to the old ones. She would tell her sister of this day, of their mother leading the women in this new ceremony, born of their circumstances. She must heed every detail, every sound and smell. What was the bird called, who flew down the branches of Atoka's elm? A shy, tufted titmouse, offering a lament. The song stopped suddenly. Then all was silent, even the season-change cold wind.
Her mother stroked the leaves of Atoka's elm against her face. Jagged dancing leaf, spiraling out, in an off-center swagger, like her brother's stride after slipping off his horse. The leaf was rough to her mother's touch, and still dark-blue green. Green, like Atoka in his ten summers of life. Her mother moved on to the oaks. She took their sunset-colored leaves between her hands, to her cheek--both the bright, touched-by-sun sides, and the pale underbellies. She bent a branch of the grandmother tree down to Rachel.
Rachel took a red leaf between her fingers. Thank you for the shade, and the welcome into your limbs, and the seed pockets that Atoka and I made into whirl toys and nose ornaments. Rachel let the thoughts flow through her fingertips to the oak's understanding. In return she felt the tree's strength, and sorrow at parting. Felt its blood singing another lament.
Her mother took her hand, led on. The women followed Elizabeth LeMoyne, honoring their trees in farewell, proceeding to the next homestead, and the next, stroking the leaves. Some wept silently. None of the children, who ranged in age from elevenyears to Turtle Woman's six-day child, were afraid of their mothers' wet cheeks, Rachel thought.
Finally, down the road from Makes Sweet Cider's cabin, the federal soldiers waited, their blue uniforms striking against the gray sky. This journey would not become the horror that last year's group faced, their leader, Captain Armstrong, promised. Peter LeMoyne's clear voice translated the captain's English into Choctaw. Atoka sat tall on his mount Likes Water, beside their father on Two Hearts. Her brother's eyes were angry and cold until they found hers. They lit with a gruff tenderness then--for her, their mother, the baby. We honor you, they said. Carry the seeds in your pouches. We will bring you to the new land. We will live again.
Surely the vicious snowstorms and cold of last year were unusual, unpredictable. This year's band was departing earlier. The steamships would be waiting at Natchez to carry them up the Mississippi and its tributaries. From Little Rock they would walk to their new land. Last year hundreds had starved when heavy rains washed out roads and trails, slowing them to fifteen miles a day. Not this year, Captain Armstrong proclaimed. This year President Jackson had put the army in charge.
Worry strained Rachel's father's clear, beautiful voice. He was a Mixed Blood, trusted like the ones who'd gone to Washington. Peter LeMoyne had not gone, had not signed his name to the agreement, but looked after his family and all the ones left behind. He'd met Andrew Jackson once, though, on Choctaw land. He had seen the American leader lose control of his temper. Old Hickory disliked asking for anything, her father had said. He preferred to threaten. There were only two choices, Andrew Jackson said, for the people standing in the way of progress: emigration or extinction. And now this man who had turned on his wartime allies, the Creek, was President of the United States. It was time to think about the new country, even Peter LeMoyne advised.
Still, when the men returned from Washington and told him of the agreement, he had walked out to their woodpile alone.Rachel followed. It was the only time she had seen her father weep. Now his eyes scanned small wagons loaded with provisions for six thousand. How many blankets, how much food, would it be enough? Rachel almost heard his thoughts.
The other leaders and their horses were dressed in their finery, gifts of the Americans. As if this were festival time, or a celebration, not an exile. Peter LeMoyne wore his red wedding-day shirt and buckskin trousers. No decorations, only that symbol of his love for their mother. And his worry.
Rachel wanted to climb on Two Hearts with him, and mold his face free of troubles. She wanted to be a peacemaker, trusted speaker among the missionaries and the soldiers, like him, there in the new land. And she wanted to do the dances and ceremonies, like her mother.
At the school, the missionaries said she could not do both, that she must choose. They had shown Rachel a globe of the world, and the place from where the English language had come. It was a small place, surrounded by blue. An island. But those who spoke the language of these islanders had power over all the world, and over the greatest parts of its wisdom and knowledge. The missionaries said the only way for the Choctaw people to become happy and respected was through this people's language, its ways, its great God who said that men should do women's work in the fields and women stay inside a house the day long. When she'd asked her father about these things, he'd smiled and said, "Know them, Tadpole, but swim as you're guided by your own heart."
He would teach her how to find the things that made the Choctaw kin to the white people who also dwelled in her Mood--not only her Frenchman grandfather, the one who drew wonderful likenesses of the Old Ones, but the English speakers too, the Americans. The Americans did not visit or trap only. They did not become Choctaw, as her French ancestor had. They wanted to live, not beside them but instead of them. They called Choctaw land the Southern Frontier and came with their black men slaves. They wished to work the land for cotton instead of the Three Sisters--corn and beans and squash. And for tobacco.Cotton was for clothing, tobacco for ceremonies. What would they eat, these new, foolish people, Rachel wondered, without the Three Sisters?
Rachel turned toward the horse soldiers. Some had eyes that reflected the sky, like Atoka's gift from their Frenchman grandfather. Nothing else about the soldiers was like her brother. They were not a dark and shining people, but whey-faced light and hairy. One, with yellow hair that sprouted all the way to his chin, pointed rudely at her mother. Why? Was he laughing at her ceremony, her grief? His eyes were greedy. Rachel didn't understand what he wanted, but she knew it was something bad. The soldier beside him pushed his shoulder. Rachel knew English almost as well as Choctaw, she was her father's "quick study." But these soldiers spoke the language in a different accent. They were from another English place, far from Mississippi, perhaps. A hard place, she decided, for they ground their R's like corn through a mill. Rachel could not understand all their words.
Suddenly, from out of the small grove of pine by Makes Sweet Cider's cabin, an old man stumbled. His clothes were ragged, his eyes hollow with grief. He spread his hands wide as he chanted.
My voice is weak. It is not the shout of a warrior but the wail of an infant. I have lost it in mourning , over the misfortunes of my people. These are their graves, and in those aged pines you hear the ghosts of the departed. Their ashes are here, and we have been left to protect them. Shall we give you their bones for the wolves?
Chief Cobb. Rachel barely recognized him. Atoka slipped down from his saddle and approached their elder. Her father spoke to the soldiers in English. Yellow Hair did not listen. Heshouted at her brother, barking orders in too-fast English. Atoka ignored his threats and calmly took the old man's arm, leading him into the woods where three women rushed toward their kin.
They were in the soldier's path. His horse bore down on Chief Cobb, the women, and her brother, at a gallop.
Rachel hissed "stay" followed by a sharp whistle. The horse stopped so abruptly the whey-faced officer almost catapulted over his saddle. He regained his seat, but not his lost face ... how do the white people say it? His dignity.
Atoka put Chief Cobb on the arm of his eldest daughter. The women guided him back into the woods.
Peter LeMoyne watched, the reins of Atoka's mount in his hands. The pride in his children had banished even the worry from his eyes, Rachel thought. She basked in the pride, smiling. Then she took her mother's hand for the long journey ahead.
Copyright © 1998 by Eileen Charbonneau